Showing posts with label cat cartoons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cat cartoons. Show all posts

Saturday, 28 August 2021

Hospice patient gets Sylvester the Cat tattoo as a final wish

NEWS AND COMMENT - KANSAS CITY, USA: I don't have much information about this but it caught my eye. A hospice patient, Clara Burnett, 83, had a lifelong wish fulfilled last week when she received a Sylvester the Cat cartoon to her forearm. 

Hospice patient gets Sylvester the Cat tattoo as a final wish
Hospice patient gets Sylvester the Cat tattoo as a final wish. Photo: Opera News.

Clara is a resident of Harbor Hospice in Johnson County. That's all I know! The reason is because the website is barred to me because I live in Europe and the website owner does not want to comply with European website regulations on privacy.

Quite a lot of people have Sylvester the Cat tattoos! Incidentally, I have a page on cartoon cats (click here to see it).

Here is a little bit of information about Sylvester. He is a Warner Bros cartoon star. His biography would include the fact that he has a lisp and is a bird-craving, black-furred, white-bellied cat who began his screen career in Life with Feathers in 1945. He had a saying which is very well known for this cartoon cat: "Sufferin' succotash". 

He starred in 104 cartoons and was animated by Friz Freleng who said that the cat was designed "subtly to like a clown with a big red nose and a very low crotch to look like he was wearing baggy pants". Mel Blanc provided the voice. Click here to read more about Sylvester.

Back to Clara. When you are dying, it is a moment when you really must do the things that you thought about doing for the previous decades of your life. We tend to look to the future and tell ourselves that we will do 'that' in the future, whatever it is. And then suddenly the future arrives and 'that thing' has not been done.

I think this scenario applies to this lady so she decided to go for it. She had to travel across the state line to Midtown Tattoo for the procedure. It took commitment and no doubt it has made her happy.

Wednesday, 14 July 2021

Is Garfield a real cat?

Garfield is an enormously popular fictional cat from the imagination of Jim Davis. But that isn't the complete story in my opinion. I believe that Garfield is a ginger tabby cat. Ginger tabby cats are very real. Garfield is real in the sense that there are real versions of him everywhere. Ginger tabbies are normally considered to be savvy and leaders of other cats in colonies. They are sometimes called red tabbies.

Garfield
Garfield. Picture now in the public domain. Disagree? Please comment.



It is interesting to note that Davis named Garfield after his grandfather whose name was James A. Garfield Davis. Before he created Garfield, Davis tried a comic strip about a gnat. It didn't work out and decided to choose a cat as a cartoon character because he "noticed there were a lot of comic strip dogs who were commanding their share of the comic pages but precious few cats."

I have no record of this, but I suspect that Davis looked at pictures of cats to choose a suitable coat colour and pattern as a basis for his character. Or he may have seen a stray cat or his neighbour may have had a red tabby cat. He must have known about the red tabby because Garfield is certainly one. Garfield is orange but then sometimes red tabby cats are also called orange tabbies! And even yellow tabbies! You get the drift.

A ginger tabby cat called Garfield
A ginger tabby cat called Garfield. Photo: his human guardian.

CLICK THIS FOR A PAGE ON CARTOON CATS.

Wikipedia says that Garfield is a Persian purebred cat. I would argue that that is unlikely because Garfield's personality is almost the opposite to that of the Persian which is rather sensitive and genteel. Garfield was always playing cruel tricks and was selfish and hedonistic. Wikipedia describes him as lazy, smug, sarcastic with a passion for human food. Not a Persian :) .

Davies drew the cartoon strips 8 to 10 weeks in advance of publication. In 2021 this comic character is still running daily which is remarkable considering his continued popularity and the fact that he was launched on June 19, 1978.

Saturday, 9 June 2012

Desdemona Cartoon Cat

Desdemona was a cartoon cat in a comic strip called Mutt & Jeff. Desdemona belonged to Cicero, who was the son of Mutt. Incidentally, this is not the cartoon "Mutt & Jeff", the videos of which you see on YouTube. However the Mutt & Jeff detectives starring in this movie cartoon were created by Bud Fisher and the creator of Desdemona was created by Al Smith who took over (after ghosting?) from Bud Fisher. Therefore, there is clearly a link and continuity. Nor, by the way, is she the cat that was seen with Cicero on November 18th 1907. It is a bit complicated as you can see.
Cicero's Cat

Desdemona made her debut on December 3rd 1933 in Cicero's Cat. It was "tacked onto" the Mutt & Jeff Sunday comic strip. The strip varied from one row to a half page of panels. It was mainly a two panel comic strip. In was (is?) a long lasting comic strip because it was still around in 1991, when it was a single panel.

Desdemona is a white cat with fine black stripes (the stripes are so close together she looks almost black!). A weird kind of tabby cat, then.  More so because she likes to wear and a hat and coat. She likes milk and likes to hang out in Kat Alley to avoid dogs.

She believes in animal rights (perhaps so does Al Smith, therefore!) and can read but not speak to people. She wants to help chickens being sent to slaughter. She can speak to animals though.  Typical of the domestic cat she likes to sleep. She studies military strategy to catch mice but fails to execute the plan properly because she falls asleep.

Al Smith

Desdemona likes to play but it can lead to the destruction of the toys such as Christmas tree ornaments which she swats.

In one cartoon strip each panel carries a one word description:
  1. Picture: Cheese is set out and a fan used to send the smell down a mouse hole. Caption: Breeze.
  2. One mouse comes out of the hole and Desdemona sniffs it. Caption: Tease.
  3. Mouse runs and Desdemona chases. Caption: Flees.
  4. She peers into the mouse hole. Caption: Sees.
  5. She falls asleep. Caption: Z's.
  6. Her tail is pulled through the mouse hole and knotted. Caption: Seize.
  7. She begs in a wheeze for the mice to let her go. Caption: Please!
Desdemona also featured in the Mutt & Jeff comic book from 1939-45. These were one page adventures.

Al Smith and Cicero's cat cartoon strip courtesy of http://schulzlibrary.wordpress.com/tag/bud-fisher/

Associated: Cartoon Cats.

Monday, 28 May 2012

Casual T. Cat

Casual T. Cat was a brown cat that walked upright (anthropomorphized). He was the cartoon cat who was electrocuted to death when a baby grabs his tail and stuffs it into a wall electrical socket. The baby had been playing with an electrical cord beforehand.

This grizzly scene was in a public service announcement safety commercial produced for American television by the American Academy of Pediatricians.

The title of the commercial was: The Shocking Adventurer of Casual T. Cat. The lesson was: "Childproof your home".

It was first seen on television in 1989. The characters in the animated short film were made of plasticine clay, using Claymation or clay animation. In this form of animation the characters are photographed, adjustments made to their positioning etc. and then re-photographed and so on. The still images are then pieced together and played as a movie creating the illusion of moving characters with a sense of three dimensions as these are three dimensional objects.

Sadly, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely nothing on the Internet that shows us what the characters looked like. Sorry!

Sunday, 27 May 2012

Captain Jack Cartoon

Captain Jack is a cat cartoon character. He is a suave adult comic books hero who was created by Mike Kazaleh, a freelance funny-animal comic animator and artist.

Captain Jack first appeared in 1986 in the comic book The Adventures of Captain Jack published by Fantagraphics Books who say they are a "Publisher of Comic Books and Graphic Novels by the World's Greatest Cartoonists". However, I cannot find a reference to this comic book character nor the creator of the character on the Fantagraphics Books' website.

Captain Jack
Captain Jack is a grey and white cat. Technically speaking he is a bicolor cat - solid and white. He likes to live well and wears a smart uniform and often smokes a cigar.

Captain Jack is a space adventurer of the 23rd century, specifically 2200. He commands a crew that includes a dog called Herman Feldman who has a side kick, a small dog with a red tail who is conveniently called Beezlebub, a play on the name, as you have no doubt guessed, of Beelzebub, meaning the devil. The crew also includes a terrier faced robot called Adam Fink.

In one adventure Captain Jack went to rescue Stanley Tomcat who had actually decided that he wanted to stay on a planet that he liked. In another space adventure Jack travels to a farming planet to help out with harvesting. The only occupants of the planet are raccoons: Fred and Janet.

Note: The picture is from a comic book cover and is published under the principles of fair use as this page promotes the cartoon and does not have a detrimental effect on the commercial rights of the character.

For more on cat cartoon characters please see: Cartoon Cats.

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